Finding Your Voice as a Content Marketer

On-Line Marketing

Photo Credit: By rawpixel on Unsplash. License

When you read content by someone who’s found their voice, there’s a really distinct ring to it. You can tell they’re really passionate, really self-expressed and really know what they’re talking about. A content marketer have to attract and retain a clearly defined audience.

People are moved by those who speak with their real voice. Yet what most people don’t realize is that almost everyone who’s found their voice had to put in a lot of work to find that voice. It doesn’t usually come naturally.

So how do you find your voice as a content marketer?

Start with What You’re Passionate About

If you love internet marketing, get into the internet marketing field. If you love crocheting, get into the crocheting field.

Ask yourself: What’s a topic that you could talk about for hours and hours on end? What’s a topic that you’d talk about and obsess about even if you weren’t getting paid?

What’s something that really lights you up in life and gets you excited?

While not every passion can be turned into a career, you’d be surprised at how many people do manage to turn their passions into money, even in very obscure fields.

Start with what you’re really passionate about. It’ll come through in your voice.

Be as Self-Expressed as Possible

Try to write without censorship. Don’t worry about grammatical correctness or political correctness.

If you’re speaking from your real voice, you’re probably going to turn some people off. However, you’ll also really attract the kinds of people you should be attracting.

People who have strong voices are polarizing – Some people like them, others might hate them. But that’s how real followings are built. Seldom is a following built from people who try to please everyone.

When you’re writing content, try to write as if you were speaking one on one to a friend. Write naturally, in a casual yet self-expressed and passionate manner.

Care about the Impact You Want to Make

Can you tell the difference between someone who’s written something and really cares if you succeed, versus someone who’s just writing the content to write the content?

Most likely, you can tell that the former has a completely different feel to it. Naturally, it’s the people who really want to help us that we feel drawn to.

When you’re writing content, ask yourself: Who are you trying to help with this content? How would you like their life to change as a result of you writing this content for them?

If you really want to help people, they can sense that. It comes through in your writing and your voice. It creates loyalty.

Your voice isn’t “one thing” that people can point to and say whether it’s good or not. It’s more of the overall vibe of your content, how everything you say is presented. A great voice will create a sense of community, loyalty and following, while a weak voice will turn people away from your content.

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A Guide to Receiving Online Payments

Business , E-commerce , On-Line Working

The World Wide Web has become an integral part of our lives. It has penetrated so deeply into our daily living that people now turn towards the World Wide Web for buying clothes, books, electronic equipment etc. For an online seller, then, it becomes imperative to find means to make an online transaction as easy and painless as possible. Since most people prefer to use their credit cards while shopping, webmasters need to integrate this service into their online shopping websites. An answer to your online payment needs can be a payment processing company.

Most online shopping sites enter into a business alliance with payment processing companies. However, you should diligently comb the market for the best deal before you sign up with a service. Make sure that they are not overcharging you. Also, check out their reputation in the market – are they known for their fair minded financial and business transactions? This kind of a company operates through two types of services – one id intended for companies with merchant accounts with their banks and the other for companies who do not possess this kind of a bank account. The first kind of service is generally used by fairly large financial institutions and organizations dealing in independent sales.

The advantage of having a merchant account is that you can receive payments within a few days of the transaction. However, if you do not have a merchant bank account, the payment processing company receives the payment on your behalf initially. The mode of operation is that the buyer will fulfill the transaction not on the seller’s website, but on the site of the payment processing company. (If you choose the former service, the processing company will help you enable your website to receive payments from the buyer directly.) Also, it is only a few times in a month that the processing company will forward you the payments.

There are a couple of steps which need to be completed before your website can host the facility of receiving payments through a credit card. Firstly, you will have to host an order form on your website. You then need to establish a gateway. This kind of service transfers the customer’s payment and credit card information to the payment processing company. You would then need to establish the facility of a shopping cart on your website. If your site already hosts this function, the payment processing company will surely be able to integrate its services with it.

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Why do you need Search Engine Optimization, (SEO)?

E-commerce , On-Line Marketing , SEO

Each year some or other new phenomena emerge. Lately, the term Search Engine Optimization, better known as SEO, has been doing the rounds. Now firstly, you probably want to know what exactly SEO is.

SEO basically comes down to your website being modified and promoted in order for you to rank higher and higher in the Search Engines. And of course, once you rank higher in the search engines, you will get more visitors to your website!

Now the major question is, why do you need SEO? Why is everyone going on about how important it is?

I will make this a tad easier by explaining why you need SEO via an easy example.

Recently South African television has been running an advert for Yogi Sip, a very yummy yogurt milky type of drink.

The advert starts where two men are standing in a huge crowd of people. They are looking for a bunch of their other friends, but now the question is how will they get the attention of their friends or find out where they are.

The one guy looks up and there’s this balloon thing in the air with a video camera on it- taking footage of the crowd and showing it on the big screen. The guy takes a mouthful of the Yogi Sip and you can see a plan forming.

His smart idea involves standing out from the crowd- he does so by asking his buddy to lift him on his shoulders. Immediately the camera takes note of them, they are literally standing out from the crowd, or rather above the crowd and they get displayed on the big screen TV shaking their hands.

On the opposite side of the crowd, their friends see them on the TV and immediately know where they are. They easily find their two friends (one still sitting on the other’s shoulders) in the big crowd.

Search Engine Optimization works much like this. The two men needed to be ‘found’ in the crowd. But with hundreds even thousands of people at the party, it proved nearly impossible.

They however improvised a plan and the two men got to stand out from the crowd. They caught the attention of their friends and were ‘found’ in an instant.

Your website is currently one of millions of websites out there. SEO is here to help you stand out from the crowd.

When making use of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) you get a chance to rank higher on Search Engines.

Let’s say you have a website for your doggy parlor business in Cape Town. When someone goes to a search engine like Google, MSN or Yahoo! and they type in the words “doggy parlor Cape Town” and press enter – then you want your website to appear in the first two or three pages. Any further than that and your lost in the crowd!

So in essence, by making use of SEO, getting an SEO consultant or company to customise your website, will definitely help you to get noticed by more and more people. And the more people that take note and visit your website, the more likely it is that those people will become customers of your business.

Is it a little bit clearer now why you need SEO? Come on, you’ve got nothing to lose and remember there’s nothing better than standing out from the crowd!

Don’t leave your site to its own fate! Our SEO techniques will help you to stay in the top of Google much longer! Contact us on Graphicsxpress(800) 685-3836

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